Sekmet

A nonet followed by free verse

Sekmet

Like her, I was a destroyer and

A healer, but the destruction

Was unconscious suppressed rage

Meted out randomly

To underserving

Victims, those who

Had it com-

Ing or

Not.

###

Mothers Day

Open to the embrace of beauty,

Purple crocus washes over anticipatory grief,

Wild clematis, not yet in flower, climbs

Into my heart, allows the worst may be yet to come,

But the best is not all behind.

Beauty shaped like four baby rabbits,

Two by two in a burrow under the giant

Ash tree, fox scat three yards away,

As I wait for the other shoe to drop

But the babies don’t. They wait

For one thing only; their mother.

Rabbits, like goddesses, ancient

Symbols of fertility, rebirth

And like the female gods have their duality;

Tricksterism.

They stomp their feet,

Refuse at dusk to return

To the enclave, the mother

Chases them below, aware

The hour of the owl is now.

The owl has eaten the fledgling

Woodpeckers and starlings

From holes high above

The roots grasp.